


Unreal City

by Bronte



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Because if Kirk is going to take down Section 31 from within, Eventual Kirk/Spock, Gen, Gratuitous Gym Sex, M/M, Music, Section 31, Smart Kirk, Strength Kink, Technobabble, he's going to need a little help from his friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-30 08:11:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bronte/pseuds/Bronte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The transfusion is not entirely without its consequences. Set during the events of STID.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

  _i. A Wicked Pack of Cards_

Leaden strings move under leaden fingers, unpractised and clumsy with disuse. In the past, he had succeeded in achieving a level of mastery unsurpassed by anyone of his age caste; such a feat had been deemed wholly remarkable by his elders as very little had been expected of him in consideration of his debilitating “disability”. And yet now, in a time where his mixed heritage was largely a passing thought in light of his species’ near extinction, his prior musical accomplishments seem relatively trivial.

He spreads the digits of his left hand as far as they will go, revelling in the simple art of stretching the muscles long disused. Skin presses over sinew and bone, tendons and knuckles distend with a rush of endorphins. The strings quaver just out of reach, leaden strings under leaden fingers. He twists the pegs until they no longer spasm beneath his touch.

Between the extensive damage taken along the upper hull of the USS Enterprise and the total loss of his Academy residence here on Earth, he considers himself illogically fortunate. Only his father is aware that he is still in possession of the priceless Vulcan artifact, the instrument somehow spared from the wreckage and debris of the Dreadnought class ship. He is well aware that his duty to his people constitutes the deliverance of the invaluable handicraft to the cultural centre of Vulcan II so that it may be studied at length. However Spock, who has long since accepted his tendency for emotional responses when the memory of his annihilated home planet is concerned, feels no guilt in keeping the cherished Vulcan lute for himself.

He presses the final peg back into the swooping neck that rests against his chest and runs the pads of his fingers across the strings in a flourish. He revels in the harmonic vibrations and chooses not to suppress the elation he feels as he glides along the heart of the instrument, the diatonic scale rising and falling with each breath from his lungs. The resulting effect is soothing, a balm on old wounds long since scarred over, and he lets his fingers take flight.

He begins his etude with a traditional folk song. He’d been proficient in the tune since he was a child and his eidetic memory pictures the convoluted scripture clearly in his mind’s eye. He floats through each bar, untroubled by the occasional added embellishment to the otherwise sensible arrangement. He closes his eyes and allows the appeasing refrain to console his senses and thoughts, his memories, his ills, his pains, his emotional turmoil now blissfully awake beneath the cotton sheets of a hospital barrack. He lets out a deep breath, one he had not realised he had been holding at the height of a ritardando, and loosens his hold.

The tune shifts and melds into a vision of his own creation, soothing dulcet tones intermingling with a new composition wrought from the gravity of his mind. The mood of the piece begins to turn decidedly sombre, melodic minors dueling with dissonant tones. They clash with intermingled clarity and ambiguous isolation in an accelerando that strikes a violent chord, diatonic shades thrown into sharp relief.

He pauses, the musical phrase lost in thought.

The spell is broken.

Spock aches for the final phrases as he sets the instrument aside. His comm blinks in the increasingly darkening room as dusk draws in, the chiming triad entirely unwelcome in the threadbare temporary residence, all but empty save for the single cot pressed against the adjacent wall and his luggage near the doorway. Unpacking had been logical, but like most things as of late, he has simply been unable to accomplish them.

Vulcan grace leads astray as he reaches and fumbles for the communicational device. He indulges in the slightest of frowns as he flips open the comm and scans through the message. He glances upwards as he processes the news and is on his feet a few seconds later.

Doctor McCoy would not have summoned him if it had not been important.

 

* * *

 

Night has fallen quickly over the San Franciscan skyline as Spock slips through the service entrance of the StarFleet hospital. He walks with purpose down the crowded corridors, the rooms still bursting with the incapacitated and the wounded. He catches the attention of several medical personnel but insists on his destination, conscious that he is not permitted to be in the hospital after hours. He has not attempted to blend into his surroundings either, his robes a swathe of charcoal against a canvas of sterile white. Hiding in plain sight is simple, especially considering the human tendency to assume, and he makes his way up to the thirty second floor of the building unhindered.

He steps passed the threshold of the lift and spies Doctor McCoy barking an order over his shoulder at one of the many subordinates at his every beck and call. The view is obstructed as Spock turns in his direction but it is obvious that the doctor is agitated. This is not uncommon when the irritable medical officer is concerned but the look of exhaustion that accompanies his glance of acknowledgment, as opposed to one of annoyance, is an unforeseen development.

“This doesn’t go past these doors,” McCoy says as a means of greeting, turning as Spock meets him in the hallway. They continue in the leftward direction Spock had initially been going in, the path that leads to Jim Kirk’s medical room burned into his memory. Spock considers commenting of the colloquial phrase the doctor has just coined in order to alleviate some of the palpable tension but chooses otherwise, staying silent in an invitation for the doctor to continue. He does not.

Kirk’s room is located at the end of the corridor, conveniently placed as Spock had quickly realised. Hiding the nature of Kirk’s revival from the upper tiers of StarFleet was continuing to fray the nerves of every party involved. The news had spread to at least half of the Enterprise by the time Khan had been brought back into sickbay, but by then the damage had already been done. The ship wide communication delivered by Spock himself had been severely palpable; speckled in blood both green and red, Spock had personally warned every single person on the vessel of the consequences that would ensue should anyone speak of Jim Kirk’s death again.

_“The captain is alive”, he had begun, his eyes brimming with emotion enough to bring each officer to a staggered standstill, “You will all ensure that he remains this way.”_

McCoy pauses before the door, tapping at the codex quickly. The sensors from within still indicate that the patient is sleeping soundly and the doctor gingerly brings the lights up to fifteen percent. He pauses, peering around the doorframe to confirm the computer’s readings before allowing Spock to enter behind him.

McCoy remains silent as Spock examines the scene before him. His eyes widen before he can control himself.

“He can barely lift his neck,” McCoy mutters, as if that is any consolation. Spock takes a step closer.

“An unforeseen side effect to the serum,” Spock replies, forcibly keeping his voice level.

McCoy easily sees past the façade and follows the Vulcan to Kirk’s bedside, “You think?”

Spock’s lips quirk downward, “I would not have stated so otherwise.”

The doctor rolls his eyes and pulls his tricorder from his pocket, running the small device above Kirk’s sleeping figure. He walks over to the medical relays lining the adjacent wall and mumbles unintelligibly over the readings, swearing in a cocktail of fury and frustration. Spock believes that this very well may be the only reason McCoy has not collapsed in exhaustion.

Spock stares at the hospital cot without being able to do so idly. He runs his fingers against the damage on the closest side, the gaping tear in the durable polypropylene impossible to mangle by human hands. Broken shards of the material litter the floors on both sides and Spock does not have to pass over to the other side of the bed to see that twin destruction has been done. He peers upwards, his eyes meeting with McCoy’s, and steps back.

“He will require … guidance,” Spock says quietly, folding his hands at the small of his back in order to keep himself from examining the damage again. McCoy purses his lips but crosses back over to Kirk’s bedside nevertheless, folding his arms tightly over his chest.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”


	2. Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wonders if he’s always been this emotionally irate or if this is all just the aftermath of, oh I don’t know, being single-handedly resurrected by the blood of a raging homicidal psychopath? He likes to think so because really, what human being doesn’t like to play the blame game? No amount of selective eugenics can breed that out of the human race.

 

 ****_i_ _._ _A Handful of Dust_

In his sleep, Jim Kirk crushes the support banisters of his hospital bed with his bare hands, and that alone should have been his first clue. When he wakes up, spent and heaving for air, he rasps for the maintenance bot to come and clean up the mess of plastic shards that he’s left scattered haphazardly all over the floor. He passes the rest of the night straining to wriggle his toes beneath the synthetic cotton sheets because he can’t move anything else. Everything hurts.

The next morning, Bones does his best to keep his expression neutral and doesn’t mention it.

He’s a little more careful after. It’s difficult and, between the drugs and the StarFleet administrative fiasco causing just as much damage as the wreckage of the warship lying just beyond the bay, Jim struggles to keep his emotions in check. He worries that once the muscular atrophy wreaking havoc in his limbs has passed, his unconscious tendency to mash ostensibly sturdy things like desks and doorframes might get a little out of hand. If he’s going to be honest with himself, he could say that it already has.

He stares in muted horror at the bedside stool he’s just mangled and tells Bones that he simply fell out of bed and landed on top of it. McCoy is unconvinced but he doesn’t mention the PADD sitting on the side table, the wreckage of San Francisco blearily streaming across the screen. He doesn’t point out that Admiral Komack and his two lieutenant commanders have just left the room after a classified debriefing McCoy couldn’t postpone any longer. He simply stares at the mess of twisted polypropylene with a foreign expression and trudges back into the hallway.

The sun is beginning to set over the bay when McCoy finally parades back into the room with an armful of hypos for what seems like the forty-second time that day. Jim is stabbed repeatedly with less and less mock vehemence as the two officers banter amiably back and forth and, homicidal rampage jokes aside, Jim is almost able to wisecrack away his growing sense of dread.

Slipping several vials of blood into his coat pocket, McCoy dims the lights and makes a jab about fluffing his pillows before bidding Jim goodnight, and if that last hypo had been filled with a strong sedative well, Bones wasn’t going to mention it.

 

* * *

  
  
Jim wakes up around 0500 and feels as if his eyes have been glued together with Bolian saliva which is, admittedly, not an experience he’s eager to repeat regardless of his affinity for blue skinned women. He mutters a streak of curses that would have made Montgomery Scott blush and groans at the ceiling in exasperation, still as inert and as immobile as ever. He tries to move his body into another position – any position – and finds that he simply cannot make his muscles cooperate. It’s a lesson in futility as frustration burns behind his eyelids. He tries to lift his neck off of his pillow and only manages to slip down the edge of mattress like a decommissioned droid. He’s annoyed enough to tear a hole in the side of his bedding but, try as he might, he can’t seem to channel any of his newborn, sociopathic super strength into any sort of productive movement.

Stubbornly, he settles on wiggling his toes again instead.

Jim groans through gritted teeth against the ache of atrophy and starts forcing his ankles into submission as well, twisting and waving his appendages to and fro against the bone deep agony coursing through his veins. The little movements are exhausting and by the time he has his feet nearly listening to every command he sends them, Jim can’t keep his eyes open any longer. Falling into another dreamless sleep, probably brought on by his physician’s repeated use of unnecessary narcotics, Jim hopes he will still have something to show for his efforts at dawn.

 

* * *

  
  
Waking up to McCoy’s smirking expression first thing in the morning is simply one of those things Jim would rather not have to deal with on a regular basis; Jim struggles to open his eyes and promptly closes them again at the unpleasant sight. The doctor chuckles darkly and mutters something decidedly smug about sleeping well before going to access the medical panels on the other side of the room but Jim has already tuned him out, focusing instead on making sure his toes and ankles are still twisting and wiggling as they had been only a few hours ago. A triumphant noise escapes his lips as the synthetic cotton sheets bob and weave overtop of his feet and McCoy spins around at the sound, his eyebrows arching in surprise. The resounding grin from both men fill the room as Jim’s movements become more and more lively; his body is finally waking up, finally showing signs of recovery from an illness unlike any.  
  
Kirk laughs for the first time in weeks.

* * *

 

He’s drugged to the gills when he finally asks, half formed words tumbling from his lips before he can actually consider the implications.

“How d’you do it?”

Spock raises a brow, “I am unable to distinguish the basis of your query.”

Jim splutters something unintelligible and rolls his eyes, “Control, Spock. How?”

“I am Vulcan,” Spock begins as if he has delivered the same phrase a thousand times before, “We are trained from a young age to contr—”

“Not your…your emotions,” Jim’s Midwestern drawl is ever so prominent, Standard enunciation lost in a haze of heavy narcotics, “Your body?”

The words sound lewd coming from his mouth and he snorts in drugged amusement because everything is funnier when he can’t feel his fingers and his tongue feel like soda pop.

Spock’s eyebrow, having previously base-lined in anticipation for a long and frequently recited elucidation of Vulcan stoicism, rises again: “To what exactly are you referring?”

“Vulcans are so strong,” Jim practically babbles, his lips not functioning like they should, “How do you do it?”

Spock hesitates before answering but Jim is already drooling and out cold.

 

* * *

 

_ii. Death Undone_

McCoy barks at the latest insubordinate weasel to have entered his laboratory and he’s finally left in peace again. He’s hunched over an electron picoscope surrounded by various tools and instruments but none of them stick out as much as the vials of blood strewn across the workspace, standing in their pipes like beacons that remind him that he’s up shit creek without a paddle. The doctor pinches the bridge of his nose and grumbles something decidedly non-Standard at the ceiling before giving up altogether, folding his arms over the desk and burying his face into the crook of his elbow.

He’s about to scream bloody murder when the laboratory’s door slides open again but he knows the sound of those hobgoblin voodoo garments anywhere and promptly turns his head towards him, one sleep deprived eyeball staring upwards with all of the cantankerous malice he can muster.

“Whaddya want?” McCoy grumbles, his eyelids aching for reprieve. Spock scans the doctor and the workspace respectively before drawing closer.

“The captain has inquired about his debility and has sought my guidance.”

McCoy pushes his half prone body back onto his elbows, cradling his face in his braced palms, “I dosed him up something awful, the kid should have been knocked out.”

“I will admit that he was rather incapacitated.”

McCoy snorts in response and stares mutinously at his research through the gaps of his fingers. He hears Spock stride towards the other side of the workbench and he spares him a glance, if only to see what the nosy Vulcan is up to.

“Do you require assistance?” Spock leans forward slightly, his eyes grazing over the collected data streaming from the wall mounted relays, “There appears to be several discrepancies in these figures.”

McCoy harrumphs and struggles to sit upright, “That’s what I thought too. But this is the fourth sample I’ve run and they’re all coming back looking like an army of Trills sneezed on his blood panel.”

Spock raised an eyebrow, “You are suggesting that the infusion has caused a symbiosis of two alternate personalities—”

“Not literally for Christ’s sake,” McCoy rolls his eyes and leers, “I was _suggesting_ that we’re dealing with two separate sequences slapped together like butter and bread! Here’s Jim before he got himself irradiated,” McCoy thrashes his hand towards the relay and Jim’s entire medical dossier flickers across the screen, the last record entered nearly a week before the incident on Nibiru. Barring his perpetually enfeebled immune system and heightened hormone levels, Jim Kirk had been a perfectly healthy human male, “And this is Jim now.”

McCoy waves his hand again and the data on the screen changes rapidly. The relays display several figures blinking blatantly in red that present contradictory analyses unlike anything he’s ever seen in his life.

“This is…troubling.”

McCoy grimaces and closes the relay with a sigh, “When you’re done being the goddamn queen of understatement over there, you can make yourself useful and try and decode what in the blazes is going on in his nervous system.”

“I assume you have already attempted to do so without success?”

“You can gloat all you want when you’ve got an answer for me. Until then, you can get you pointy head out of your ass and start working.”

Spock raises an eyebrow and McCoy scowls back. Equilibrium restored, the two men begin.

 

* * *

 

_iii. The Man With Three Staves  
_

The days and hours bleed into each other, physical therapy and paperwork and visitors become blemishes in an otherwise blank expanse of ennui and monotony. He still can’t control the accidental surges of uncontrollable strength when he’s livid or frustrated or a colourful mixture of the two. It’s becoming more and more difficult to keep the unconventional side-effect of having his ass dragged back from the dead hidden from Bones, let alone from the rest of the personnel that regularly trickle in. He thinks Spock may have already figured it out, what with the way he stares at him like a scientific experiment every time he shows any signs of anger. He feels like a specimen pinned to a mounting board beneath the Vulcan’s gaze and that alone makes his rage issues even more glaring.

He wonders if he’s always been this emotionally irate or if this is all just the aftermath of, oh I don’t know, being single-handedly resurrected by the blood of a raging homicidal psychopath? He likes to think so because really, what human being doesn’t like to play the blame game? No amount of selective eugenics can breed that out of the human race, and Jim swallows the lump in his throat with a sense of dread as he stumbles back into bed after an exhausting session with his PT, shattered and drained.

Another two and a half weeks pass and he’s finally being sent home to a muggy StarFleet apartment, the furniture and floors polished spotless by the cleaning bots charging in the corner. The expansive view of the bay only proves to corroborate just how much has changed out there, just how many people have lost their lives. Jim locks the door behind him and sinks to his haunches in exhaustion, taking the first object within reach and throwing it violently across the room. The mugful of styluses shatters with a satisfying crunch against a support beam on the other side of the flat and Jim pauses for a moment, apprehension creeping onto his features.

Resigned, he spends the rest of the evening throwing objects and watching them smash.

 

* * *

 

He stares passed the fragmented skyscrapers, the ruins of his own personal failures artificially lit from within, and squints blearily up at the night sky. The light pollution muddles the light of the stars but he can still see the moon shining through the cloud cover, a beacon obscured.

 

* * *

 

Jim regretfully pulls himself out of bed the next morning, the view from his windows displaying the calamity with alarming clarity even nearly five weeks along. It’s somehow worse in the morning, he thinks, and he commands the computer to polarise the windows if only to block out the glare of the razed steel against the rising sun.

He’s attended monument dedications, memorials, funerals and ceremonies. He’s written hundreds of consolation letters from his hospital bed and somehow, he’s taken it all remarkably well. Bones is visibly concerned and Jim honestly doesn’t blame him; he’s quite surprised himself at how he’s somehow managed to make it through it all so far publically unscathed. He’s cried, he’s destroyed things, he’s coped, but privately; there’s no reason to share his bereavement with others, not when he’s perfectly capable of dealing with it all himself. Bones suspects him of internalisation and worries that he’ll eventually crack beneath the burden but Jim knows he has a point. No one will blame him for freaking out publicly one day, sending the insatiable press into an uproar, but that future is by no means set in stone and that is one life lesson he’s starting to take for granted.

He goes through the motions, and although the case regarding the revocation of his captaincy had been tabled and rejected (no doubt because of the Section 31 intel he had managed to dig up while he was still barely able to feed himself), he stills feels like something is out of place and just out of reach. He’d meant what he had said to Spock as the walls of the Enterprise had collapsed around them. He’d meant what he had said when he had yielded his rank to the officer he had thought merited the captaincy he had never deserved. The Vulcan had done his share and more in these past weeks, stepping in when Jim had been too sedated to do anything but drool on the bedcovers. Spock deserves the title more than anyone, and he tells him this as they travel across the quad together, plodding slowly towards the temporary office Spock has taken over at the Academy.

“I fail to see the relevance of your statement,” Spock states vacantly as they step into the usually bustling corridors of the linguistics department, muted after the widespread chaos still consuming StarFleet Academy. Most of the junior cadets had been transferred to the campuses in Cape Town and Hong Kong shortly after the disaster; the older cadets, meanwhile, were being fast-tracked out of the system as fast as the faculties could manage, proposing cooperative residencies on the remaining (and fully functional) starships instead.

“Please don’t play dumb with me,” Jim pleads as he follows Spock into the office, eyes trailing him as the Vulcan sits gently on his chair behind the desk, “You know as well as I do that—”

“If you believe that your current physical discrepancies are in anyway obstructive to your duties as captain, I can assure you that your concerns are unnecessary. You are the appropriate officer for the position regardless of your misplaced insecurity concerning your ability to lead.”

Jim sputters and purses his lips at the quip about being insecure – Jim Kirk is _not_ insecure and he’s sure as hell not about to start now – but his anxiety belies his indignance as he sags onto the chair across from Spock, “It’s not just that, it’s—”

“You have been fully reinstated as the captain of the USS Enterprise, a career you have actively and ruthlessly sought. I find it difficult to believe that you would willingly disregard such an opportunity to embark on a five year exploratory mission, a mission in which you have previously shown a remarkable amount of enthusiasm for, due to your—”

“—if you say insecurities again, I swear I will—”

“— _concerns_ regarding your abilities to undertake a leadership role on the Enterprise. I would advise you to control your impulses before rumours of your… uncertainties reaches the admiralty.”

Jim stares at Spock and briefly fantasises about grabbing one of those stupid eyebrows and ripping it off of his forehead with his bare hands, “Spock, if you would let me just finish my damn sentence—”

“Anything you wish to state regarding the resignation of your captaincy would be redundant and a misappropriation of my time—”

Jim has to give Spock some credit; he barely flinches as Jim crushes the armrests of the chair he’s sitting in, twisting the aluminum beneath his palms like soft toffee. Seconds of barefaced silence pass between them and Jim starts to panic internally, eyes widening with horror as he forces himself to keep a hold of his emotions, waiting for Spock to react, to say something, anything.

Jim releases the misshapen metal and lets his hands hang comically in the air, too startled to put them down for fear of destroying something else. He looks down at the mess of metal and looks back up at Spock, his expression desperately imploring.

Spock simply stares, “The transfusion has affected you adversely.”

“You think?!,” Jim replies tersely and the tension in the room is electric. Spock raises a brow and considers.

“You have not discussed your…unique symptoms with Doctor McCoy?”

“No,” Jim mutters through gritted teeth and it’s all he can do to keep himself from wrenching his ruined chair out from under him and twisting it into a pretzel. He schools his facial expression into something that might have resembled neutrality, feigning calm as Spock eyes him scrupulously.

“You previously inquired as to how I manage to control my superior strength in an environment made suitable for humans. I see now that the side effects have not abated as I had expected. I apologise for disregarding your request,” Spock pauses thoughtfully, and the realisation that Jim can distinguish the differences between the Vulcan’s seemingly dispassionate expressions is enough that he can feel himself begin to cool off, “I believe I can be of assistance if you require instruction on the matter.”

Jim continues to stare at him for a solid thirty seconds and finally nods dumbly. He mutters a quick acknowledgment and quietly leaves the room.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little taste of what's to come. I love a good conspiracy just as much as I love a good love story. And there will be a love story soon enough, but I'm going to parallel with canon as much as possible so bear with me.
> 
> Un-betad.
> 
> Gratuitous references to Eliot's The Wasteland abound.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Chapters will be significantly longer. 
> 
> Un-betad.
> 
> Gratuitous references to Eliot's The Wasteland abound.


End file.
